*No purchase is necessary. One entry per email address per month. Along with sweepstakes entry, you will receive occasional TheraBreath newsletters containing valuable oral care tips and exclusive product savings. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Posts Tagged ‘gum disease’

Having bad breath can be a real nuisance, particularly when you try to keep your teeth and gums healthy. This issue led us at TheraBreath to try something of a thought experiment. Can you have halitosis even though your teeth are white and you have healthy gums?

As you might expect from such a leading question, the answer is most certainly yes. Even individuals who brush three times a day and floss are at risk for breath odor, which is why we provide specialty breath freshening products for individuals of every level of oral health.

It’s easy to spot clean teeth. After all, white chompers tend to stand out naturally, just as their opposite – that is, stained, yellow teeth – also make an immediate impression. But what do healthy gums look like? Are they all that different from those that are unhealthy?

Well, according to the American Dental Association, healthy gum tissue (also known as the gingiva) is usually light pink in color. It is also uniform, meaning your gums are not spotty, streaked or discolored. Healthy gums cling tightly around the teeth and have little or no plaque stuck down inside them.

Infected gums look and feel very different. They are typically a deep red or purple, and they can get quite swollen. If you have gum disease or worse, periodontitis, your gums may be loaded with plaque and will appear to be pulling away from the teeth. And it almost goes without saying that unhealthy gums can be terribly uncomfortable or painful.

To keep your healthy gums in good shape, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research recommends brushing twice a day, flossing, seeing the dentist often and avoiding tobacco. Adding a specialty breath freshening rinse or lozenge to this routine may keep your gingiva even healthier, since all-natural, oxygenating products can reduce the level of bad bacteria in your mouth.

Are you or a loved one trying to get pregnant? Then you’ll definitely want to read on…

ScienceDaily.com reports that at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology Professor Roger Hart stated the gum disease has as much a negative impact on trying to conceive as obesity. As we’ve previously stated, gum disease in pregnant women (or “pregnancy gingivitis”) can result in a premature birth.

Periodontal disease (gum disease) has been linked with many types of illness: respiratory and kidney disease, type 2 diabetes, heart disease. However, this new report says that having gum disease prior to conception may make trying to get pregnant that much more difficult.

Professor Hart is the Professor of Reproductive Medicine at the University of Western Australia in Perth and Medical Director of Fertility Specialists of Western Australia. He stated, “Until now, there have been no published studies that investigate whether gum disease can affect a woman’s chance of conceiving, so this is the first report to suggest that gum disease might be one of several factors that could be modified to improve the chances of pregnancy.”

It’s a common wives’ tale that a dog’s mouth is nine times cleaner (or some similar number) than a humans. While this has been proven to
be false, it should be obvious to those of you that have ever had a whiff of some serious doggie breath!

Bad breath is often caused by the bacteria in one’s mouth – whether it is human or canine. The Knox News published an article that discusses the many causes of bad breath in dogs. A few of them are causes that humans often doing have to worry about for their own breath. These include the use of one’s tongue to clean hard-to-reach body parts and the ingestion of items that people don’t consider food.

There are, however several causes that can afflict both humans and dogs: metabolic problems, gastrointestinal diseases, cancer, food allergies and gum disease. All in all, dogs often get halitosis for the same reason people do – microbes. Bacteria that thrives in the oral cavity (whether it be dog or human) feed off of remnants of the food we eat. As these bacteria digest sugars and proteins, they give off awful-smelling compounds that our brains register as bad odors.

How can you fight bad breath? If you’re human, you may want to think about using an oral care probiotic to naturally combat these bad breath bugs. For your four-legged best friend, TheraBreath also has the answer with Dr. Katz for Dogs and Cats Oral Spray or Solution. You can either put a few harmless capfuls of the solution into your dog’s water bowl or take the more direct approach and use our spray to directly target the mouth and neutralize any doggie breath. Give them a try – both you and your pet will thank us.

Have you ever wondered how many people actually have bad breath? Then you’re not alone. The American Dental Association (ADA) asked itself the same thing – and the results were a bit surprising. The Council of Scientific Affairs published a report that states that a whopping 50 percent (yes, half) of the US population has bad breath at any one time. And of that 50 percent, half of that group has chronic halitosis.

This study that was published in the Journal of ADA stated that about 90 percent of all halitosis originates from the oral cavity itself. It’s true that a small percentage of bad breath can be from diseases within the lungs, bloodstream or gastrointestinal tract, but the majority starts and lingers in palate, gums and throat. This research stated that many mouthwashes chemically mask the foul smell, while others (yes, including TheraBreath) actually get to the source of foul breath and can fix and prevent it.

The paper stated, “[A] mechanism that has been proposed for the action of mouthrinses is the inactivation of [volatile sulfur compounds] and their conversion into nonmalodorous compounds by zince salts.” TheraBreath’s patented technology works very similarly to truly clean and refresh your mouth along with helping fight gum disease and even whiten your teeth, depending on which of our mouthwashes you are using.

What does this study mean? If you’re suffering with bad breath, you definitely are not alone. However, you can be a part of the half of the American population that has fresh breath on a daily basis by using TheraBreath products.

Did you think that mouthwash was just for your oral health? A new study conducted suggests that rinsing with mouthwash while pregnant (for mothers that have gum disease) have more of a chance of carrying a baby to full term. This study was published by Reuters Health and states a fact that we often discuss: pregnant women with periodontal disease tend to have more premature babies than women with healthy gums. Why? We’re still not sure (even after this study) however, it is known that rinsing regularly with an alcohol-free mouthwash (like any of TheraBreath’s Oral Rinses) may cut a woman’s risk of delivering early by almost 75%! Isn’t it worth trying?

The research term in this study asked 71 pregnant women with gum disease to gargle twice daily with an alcohol-free mouthwash. The team then compared the number of preemies with a group of 155 pregnant women who also had gum disease that only gargled with water. For the water only group, one in five (34 moms total) gave birth early – meaning before 35 weeks of pregnancy. Of the 71 others that rinsed with mouthwash, only 4 moms gave birth early (about one in five).